I'm working on a plug-in for Vim, and I'd like to test that it behaves correctly, under start-up, when users edit files e.t.c.
To do this, I'd like to start a terminal, and feed keys in to it. I'm thinking of doing it all from a python script. Is there a way to do this?
In pseudo-python it might look something like this:
#start a terminal. Here konsole
konsole = os.system('konsole --width=200 --height=150')
#start vim in that terminal
konsole.feed_keys("vim\n")
#run the vim function to be tested
konsole.feed_keys(":let my_list = MyVimFunction()\n")
#save the return value to the file system
konsole.feed_keys(":writefile(my_list, '/tmp/result')\n")
#load result into python
with open('/tmp/result', 'r') as myfile:
data = myfile.read()
#validate the result
assertEqual('expect result', data)
I think you should verify the core functionality of your plugin inside Vim, using unit tests. There's a wide variety of Vim plugins, but most provide some additional mappings or commands, to be invoked by the user, and they usually leave behind some side effects in the buffer, or output, or opened windows. That can be verified from inside Vim. There are a various approaches for that, mine is the runVimTests test framework; the plugin page has links to several alternatives.
With the core functionality thus covered, there's little left to test "interactively". (I mean stuff like forgotten debug output, too long execution times, display mess-ups.) Since you're usually a heavy user of Vim and your plugin yourself, that mostly covers it.
Of course, if your plugin embeds itself tightly into Vim (like an "IDE for XXX"; though this is usually frowned upon), you may consider some external test driver. Maybe others will contribute pointers to some general-purpose, terminal-driven test frameworks. I'm almost sure such exist.